Posts from — July 2015

The intent of our farm in the city is to educate local children, and the general public, about the benefits of hyper-local food production.

Excerpt from fundraising site:

Through outreach and partnership, it is our goal to use this farm to benefit our surrounding community as much as possible. We expect the programs we set up to evolve and expand as the farm becomes more established. In our first year the farm will be managed by volunteers and interns from Seattle Central Community College’s Sustainable Agriculture program. We plan to lead free monthly tours for the public, and education workshops for children.

“When I started the program, the problem was the mind-set that farming isn’t compatible in the city. It’s all in the mind-set. You can do vertical garden or start with small containers,” said Ms. Belmonte

Business World Weekender
July 23, 2015

Excerpt:

The city currently has 68 farms of various sizes found in barangays, public elementary schools, daycare centers, parishes, and nongovernment organizations. The city works with the Department of Environment and Natural Resources and the Department of Agriculture, which provide financial grants.

But even if city farmers fail to bring their items to market, urban farming is still a win-win situation.

Stephen Henderson talks with Nick Leonard, Equal Justice Works Fellow at the Great Lakes Environmental Law Center, about the laws that govern urban farming and the upcoming Detroit Food Entrepreneur Legal Workshop on July 30th.

WDET
July 23, 2015

Excerpt:

Basic legal background: Leonard says that many people just do not know what rules apply to urban farming, but ignorance is no defense in the eyes of the law. He says people need proper approvals to know how to organize as nonprofits or low liability companies and to be familiar with zoning ordinances.

Neighborhood outreach: Leonard says that neighborhood outreach is very important. He says people are often wary of outsiders in Detroit and many people have negative associations with agriculture, so farms should be open about what they are doing and why.

“For nearly 100 years, Boeing has demonstrated its commitment to communities around the globe through its Global Month of Service,”

By Asia Morris
Long Beach Post
July 23 2015

Excerpt:

This Saturday, Boeing employees will roll up their sleeves and dirty their hands to provide much-needed assistance at The Growing Experience (TGE) Urban Farm in Long Beach, for the third consecutive year, as part of the company’s annual Global Month of Service Initiative.

Volunteers of all ages will work alongside TGE staff and the Housing Authority of the County of Los Angeles (HACoLA), which oversees the farm, to help with the greenhouse’s vertical plant towers, community food forest, community garden maintenance and orchard harvesting. Volunteers will also work in the community kitchen to preserve vegetables and make fig jam.

The tractor will help them continue to transform vacant lots in North Memphis’ most blighted neighborhoods and provide naturally grown local produce

Excerpts from their Kickstarter website:

The City of Memphis faces many challenges. Among them are blighted vacant lots, food deserts, health challenges, and unemployment. North Memphis Farmer’s Collective seeks to take these challenges and turn them into solutions by using what others see as waste as the fertilizer for vacant lots, thereby turning decay and blight into blossoming Urban Farms.

A documentary made for the heritage project by the young filmaker, Joe Dickie.

By the late 60’s some people were taking over vacant properties and doing the repairs themselves. The squatting movement was born, and with it, the roots of Kentish Town City Farm.

In 1972, a local organization called Inter-Action rented a house, a cottage and part of the disused timber yard known as Gloster Parquet – now the site of Kentish Town City Farm. They found, tucked behind the terrace houses, the remains of a complex of buildings surrounded by yards of overgrown weeds that backed onto the railway. The buildings included stables, a workshop, a store house and steel framed hangars. Local businessmen donated building materials and equipment worth over £5000. A team of volunteers, youth workers, farm workers and Inter-Action’s architects and builders converted the stables and buildings into a farm, riding school and gardens.

As the costly fiasco of a failed rooftop lettuce farm that was enthusiastically promoted by Vancouver Mayor Gregor Robertson in 2012 continues to unwind, a white elephant greenhouse has been posted for sale on Craigslist for $1.5 million.

The “innovative rooftop vertical farm,” which is now central to a lawsuit against the City of Vancouver, still stands unused atop a city parkade at 535 Richards St.

Guy Irving (from left), 20, and Rayonna Wilson, 15, from New Life Community Center, arrive at Alice’s Garden with kale to plant on Tuesday. ‘I like how everyone comes together as a community (at Alice’s Garden). There is a lot of hard work and dedication (here),’ said Irving. – Image credit: Angela Peterson

“[Farming] is not rural. That’s the stereotype,” she said. “People have been growing food in cities forever.”

By Marion Renault
Journal Sentinel
July 22, 2015

Excerpt:

Weyonia Shurn, 16, used to eat chips for breakfast and buy junk food from other students at her high school.

But after spending the last month mulching and weeding alongside almost 30 teenage workers at a 2-acre urban garden located in Lindsay Heights, Shurn said that, for the first time, she’s interested in being healthy.

Of all the remarkable statistics concerning vacant land in the city of Detroit, the fact that the city is home to over 1,400 urban gardens and farms sticks out. That’s more than 10 gardens/farms per each of the city’s 139 square miles. According to Keep Growing Detroit, an organization that promotes the development of a food sovereign city, this volume of gardens and farms has made Detroit “our nation’s capital of urban agriculture.”

City Farming is an organization that inspires students, families, and corporations to grow their own food in Mumbai—on terraces, balconies, and even the sides of buildings. Hosting weekly workshops, City Farming teaches Mumbaikars the growing methods of Dr. R. T. Doshi: with a little sugarcane waste, used polyethylene bags, soil, and seeds, the environmental impacts of pesticides, synthetic fertilizer, and the unnecessary disposal of organic waste are avoidable.

They found that in the majority of examples, eating vegetables grown in the contaminated soils studied was safe. Levels of contaminants in root vegetables, such as carrots, were higher than in tomatoes and collard greens. But the researchers said there was no reason to avoid gardening in city soils, as long as precautions are taken.

“Washing hands thoroughly after gardening, covering pathways with woodchips or gravel, and keeping soil moist during dry and windy conditions to prevent dust generation are all effective preventative measures to ensure safe gardening,” said Ganga Hettiarachchi, a soil chemist at Kansas State University and lead author of the study.

José de Jesús González, right, the leader of Bordofarms’ workers, begins the day tending young plants in boxes along the Tijuana River, Feb. 25, 2015. Eros Hoagland for Al Jazeera America.

Volunteers built boxes, carted dirt and planted seedlings in what organizers say are the first step in an urban farming project aimed at addressing the issue of homeless U.S. deportees.

By Miguel Marshall
Huffington Post
July 21

Excerpt:

The Tijuana Global Shapers Community (a diverse group of young leaders affiliated to World Economic Forum), proposed a project focused on building technology based vertical farms along the edge of the Tijuana River — a project similar to the New York highline but with a productive twist. The idea was inspired by an experience with Angel Ventures Mexico where we invested, through an Angel Group, in Home Town Farms; a startup doing vertical farming in the neighboring San Diego area.

Bettada Budada Thota”, an 18-acre farm in Malavalli taluk, 75 km away from Bengaluru is the culmination of dreams and desires of 11 families with diverse interests.

Two local farmer families take care of the farm during weekdays

By Anitha Pailoor,
Deccan Herald
July 21, 2015

Excerpt:

The team cultivates millets, pulses, vegetables and some horticulture plants. Most of the crops are rainfed and drip irrigation is used to water vegetable patch and horticulture plants. They also raise cattle for the purpose of manure. At least four to five families gather at the farm every week. “Even if we are not able to make it to the farm for two weeks, we are confident that the work doesn’t suffer,” says another member Anil Nadig.

On the 5th floor of Roosevelt University’s Loop campus, there are two rooftop vegetable gardens.

Later this summer, those vegetables and herbs will be harvested and used in Roosevelt’s dining hall.

By Karis Hustad
ChicagoInno
07/20/15

Excerpt:

There are five green roofs on the Wabash building, three of which create natural insulation to assist with temperature control, while two grow vegetables that are used in the dining hall. The vegetable gardens have been a bit of a living laboratory for the last three years, as students have experimented with different types of plants in order to understand what works best at a certain height with certain amounts of light. For example, tomatoes didn’t work out so well on the fifth floor said Quinsell. “Patience is a big thing,” she said, when experimenting with urban farming.